As if the Russellville High School football program hasn't suffered enough following a 1-9 season, school officials made a horrible discovery Monday morning when superintendent Randall Williams went to check on the new field's condition after a Sunday rain.

Athletic director Jim Dickerson said when Williams got to the field, he saw that there was plastic strung all over the soccer goal, charcoal was spread all over the field and paint had been dripped in an irregular pattern on the section of turf behind the end zone called the "D-Zone."

Dickerson then left his office in the Gardner Building on South Arkansas Avenue to see the damage for himself, but, he said, before he was able to arrive, maintenance workers found that the damage done wasn't just on the field. The offenders had broken down the door to the concessions stand and trashed the place. They threw everything off the shelves, broke the fluorescent lights and busted out the windows with a fire extinguisher.

They weren't done, though. The vandals then busted out the windows of two ticket booths with the fire extinguishers and unloaded their contents inside the ticket booths.

Dickerson said they next found where the culprits broke into the football booster clubs booth by breaking down the door, damaging the Cyclone on the front of the building and breaking the lighted Russellville Cyclones sign on the back.

The field house itself was next as they gained entry in the same manner as the other buildings. They threw a chair through a big screen television set in the weight room where the team studies film. They went into the locker room and pulled paper out of some lockers and set them on fire in the floor.

They found their way into the equipment room, pulled all the equipment onto the floor and doused it with ball cleaner.

"We're still working on the inventory in the equipment room, but I don't know of anything that has been stolen as of yet," Dickerson said. "It appears to just be a lot of damage."

Upon further inspection, Dickerson said they found where the vandals painted on the Cyclone on midfield of the turf, as well as the sidelines, and said it appeared they dumped an entire gallon of red paint on the track.

"But our maintenance staff got out there quickly and, using soap and detergent, scrubbed and washed the paint residue through the filtering drainage system, so it cleaned up real well," he continued. "One good thing is we got there while (the paint) was still wet, and they were able to get on it quickly."

The attack on the school's property will ensure heightened security for the stadium, field house and other outlying areas of the school.

"Oh yeah, we're going to increase security," Dickerson said. "We'll probably install a camera system. Although right now, with all the construction going on down there, it's difficult to secure the area because we have the whole fence down there on the east end. But we're going to look at our security procedures and tighten those up."

Dickerson said he believes there was more than one culprit, and Public Information Officer Josh McMillian of the Russellville Police Department said no arrests have been made, but every possible lead is being investigated.

"This is something that is an attack against not only the football program, but it's an attack against the whole athletic program as well as against the whole school district," Dickerson said. "And this money that we're having to use to repair this is money that is part of the general fund that we use for everything. This is not just athletic money. So an attack in that area is more than just an attack against athletics. That's an attack on the whole school district and an attack on the taxpayer."

He added he thinks this is a local issue, and that it doesn't have anything to do with one of the school's rivals.

"Really and truly we've had some problems in the past (with other schools vandalizing ours), but it's been a long time," he said. "I think that type of damage and destruction is a thing of the past. I don't think that someone came down from another school and did something like that. I think it's local, and I think that somebody knows who it is."

He said anybody with information can contact the Russellville Police Department at 968-3232 or the Russellville High School athletics department at 890-6356.